By Mudiaga Affe, Kassim Omomia, Ben Ogbemudia, Andy Asemota, Idu Jude and David Lawani
For many residents of Kaduna, siege seems to be the apt word to now describe the state with the sobriquet, Centre of Learning.

With the unending menace of banditry and kidnapping, among other criminal activities, life in the 54-year-old state has since become hellish.

Indeed, the latest of the evildoing, the kidnap of scores of students from Bethel Baptist High School, Damishi, attests to perpetual security threat criminal elements have laid siege to the state.

No fewer than 140 students of the school were last Monday whisked away by abductors who curiously are demanding foodstuff before they engage in any form of negotiation.

The abductors’ food demands include 30 bags of rice, 20 bags of beans, 15 jerry cans of palm oil, 20 cartons of maggi (seasoning) and 10 bags of salt.

Gunmen had the previous day stormed the National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Centre, Zaria, taking as their prey eight persons, including two nurses and one-year-old baby.

The state governed by Nasir el-rufai has lately witnessed increased spate of abductions, especially in schools. Still fresh in mind are the abductions of students and teachers from the College of Forestry Mechanisation, Afaka; the Greenfield University, and the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.

For instance, parents and authorities of the Greenfield University, where no fewer than 20 students were kidnapped, paid hundreds of millions of naira, even as their abductors eventually killed three of the students.

The unending kidnappings and bloodbaths, which seemed to be overwhelming the government, have drawn the ire of some Nigerians who think fresh measures should be adopted to win the war, not just in Kaduna, but across the country.
A professor in the Faculty of Law, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Yusuf Dankofa; President, African Council on Narcotics, Rekpene Bassey; a former representative of Kaduna Central in the eighth Senate, Senator Shehu Sani; a serving member of the House of Representatives from Kaduna State, Garba Datti, among prominent Nigerians,who have bemoaned the situation.

The Kaduna security challenge

Former Senator Sani, while lamenting the killings and kidnappings, said the governor owed the people of the state some explanations.

He said, “As of today, Kaduna has the highest kidnapping cases. More painful, is that the governor made things worse by encouraging parents and state government to pay ransoms for the release of their children and this has made the situation of the children in captivity a pitiable one.

“Many parents have lost their loved ones due to el-Rufai’s position and this may be because no children of the elite have been involved. Recently, Governor el-Rufai withdrew his child from a public school for the fear of kidnapping. If the Chief Security Officer of the state can do this, indeed the less privileged are doomed in the state.

“People no longer go to farms and markets. Schools now close down permanently. And I think that this is the wishes of the All Progressives Congress-led government because if it is not, the government should have done something. After all, I have seen other governors who face similar situations do something to curb or end the menace.

Also, Datti, representing Sabon-Gari federal constituency in the House of Representatives, said, “We now wake up every day to hear of new people being kidnapped in the school environment. It has reached disturbing levels that the authorities must, as a matter of urgency, act before the communities are allowed to be dragged into a state of anarchy.”

An Abuja-based lawyer from Southern Kaduna, Zayyad Danjuma, blamed the state government for the escalating banditry in the state, adding that the intervention by past governments showed genuine concern by taking steps to bring past crises to an end.

“Imagine that over 50 persons have been killed in a particular part of the state you govern within one week, you never bothered to visit that area to commiserate with the people and find a lasting solution. There is no single condemnation of the dastardly act.

“It is on record that el-Rufai has a strong disdain for the people of Southern Kaduna to the extent that they don’t trust him any longer. At any given opportunity, instead of correcting that information, he keeps reinforcing it out rightly. More so, whenever there is an attack in Southern Kaduna, the present government even at the federal level turns a blind eye.”

Similarly, Sunday Abdul, a lecturer in the Department of Languages, Kaduna State University said, “It is looking increasingly like the governor is losing control of the situation or has one way or the other contributed to the problems.

“Even performing religious obligations is becoming difficult as places of worship are routinely targeted, burnt, and destroyed with attendant loss of lives. The Kaduna-Abuja Road, Kaduna-Kachia Road, Kaduna-Zaria Road, Kaduna-Birnin Gwari Road are all under siege of bandits and kidnappers.

“Businesses are daily relocating from Kaduna. Residents are helpless and go about their lives with trepidation. In all of these, governance is absent as the governor operates the state as a one-man affair.”

Also, the Founder of Peace Revival and Reconciliation Foundation of Nigeria, Yohanna Buru, said Kaduna State has been under siege and crises-ridden in the last 40 years.

Buru added that the situation has degenerated from the popular known, and often ethno-religious, communal clashes, farmers/Fulani herders’ conflicts, to kidnapping and banditry.

He stated that the insecurity in the state was becoming unsuitable for the people and socio-economic life, insisting that it was high time the government rose to the challenges.

According to him, the government may have been vocal by updating the people about the numbers of those kidnapped and the rescue efforts, at times by the security agencies.

“That does not matter to the people. What matters at this critical moment for the state is how to secure Kaduna and return it to the good,” he stressed.

Buru quoted one leader of the bandits he identified as Bilabri, to have boasted some time ago that “as long as they (bandits) don’t receive ransom, Kaduna State will be a battleground.”

He added, “Since then, kidnapping has tripled with the bandits often going to people’s houses to attack them and collect a ransom.

He, therefore, urged the government of Governor el-Rufai to go back to the drawing board by negotiating with the bandits. “The government should collaborate with the public, NGOs, and the security agencies to stop the killings now,” he stressed.

According to him, the bandits are ready to negotiate, therefore the government should go to the round-table with them and stop pretending.

Contributing, Dankofa said the rising spate of kidnappings was an indication that the state cannot curb the menace.

Calling on both the state and the federal governments to invest in technology, Dankofa charged security agencies to take more proactive steps by deploying superior technological powers.

Dankofa said, “It also shows that the present leadership cannot confront and address this issue. If the problem is funding, why not address it. If it is human resources within the security outfits, weed out those that cannot work and bring in those who are nationalistic and patriotic enough.

“Already, these bandits have captured some councils in the north and they are providing alternative government. In other climes, this government would have crashed. We Africans have continued to accept the absurd and it is consuming all of us. In the United Kingdom, a minister was caught romancing another woman, he resigned, let alone on this issue that affects human lives and mass killings.

“The authorities need to spend money on technology to address this issue. Like the SIM card registration that is ongoing, CCTV installations across the state as well as air surveillance. The security agencies will need to be proactive because as it is now the government is helpless. You cannot fight this kind of banditry without superior technological power.

“Although they are stressing on community policing, this cannot work now because the communities have become the victims. Government must wake up because welfare and security are the basic essences of governance.”
Similarly, the President of the African Council on Narcotics, Bassey, said the stand of el-Rufai against negotiation with kidnappers was in the right direction, but efforts should be made to combat the crime with superior technology.

Bassey said, “I have heard Governor Nasir el-Rufai say he does not want to negotiate with kidnappers, I think it is a right step. The option left to tackle this crime is the use of security. It can be decisively dealt with by employing the use of technology and structural measures.

“These kidnappers have been in contact with the parents of their abductees with the use of mobile phones. The security agencies ought to have taken advantage of that to track them. The fact that they use telephones means that half of the problem is solved.

“Security operatives can track and locate them. And if you can locate them, you can deal with them. But it looks as if the government is handicapped over this matter. If you do not want to encourage the payment of ransom, then deal with them using the appropriate technology and security structural measures to deal with them.

“Even if it means setting up a special anti-kidnapping tax force nationally, it will be better. There is need for a combined team of security operatives that require special training to help deal with the situation. I think it will work. We need to challenge our political will to be able to tackle some of these criminal challenges.”

For a former member of the Katsina State House of Assembly, Usman Dalhatu, Nigeria’s security architecture lacked the adequate manpower to deal with prevailing security challenges.

Dalhatu, a lawyer said, “The Armed Forces and security agencies are supposed to recruit quite a large number of personnel. The country’s population is about 200 million and we don’t have up to 500,000 military personnel. Again, how many policemen do we have?

“We must endeavour to recruit more people into the police and the armed forces. They must also acquire modern war armament, maybe drones so that they will be able to monitor through satellite. This will help in no small measure because there are some villages where the residents may be subjected to attacks if they give information to relevant authorities.”
Take up arms to protect yourselves- ex-NARD president

A former President, National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), Aliyu Sokomba, advised the federal government to allow Nigerians to own guns to enable them to check crime in their communities.

Stopping the citizens from owning guns, he added, was fuelling banditry in Kaduna.

Sokomba said, “In my opinion, the spate of insecurity is not only in Kaduna but also in the entire country. As far as banditry and insecurity are concerned, the security apparatus in the country cannot protect the people. They are overwhelmed. They don’t have enough weaponry. They do not have the requisite skills. They don’t have the technology to nip these issues in the bud.

“The people doing these evil acts are capitalising on these gaps. Even if you deploy the entire security in Kaduna, they cannot stop the banditry. This is so because the bandits have a wide range of places to attack. They can go to any school or place of their choice. You will not be able to mobilize your security to all the places at the same time.

“The only solution is to allow everybody to protect themselves. If the bandits have the slightest idea that people are protected, they will tread with caution. If they know that there is a sniper somewhere, they won’t go there. Or someone they know is having his AK47, they won’t bother.

“I know that it is a matter of time. I know we will get to that point where people will be allowed to own guns legally. As it is now, the law of no weapon is only for people who will not use it for criminal activity.”

Negotiate with bandits –Gumi
Meanwhile, Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, in his contributions, insisted that dialogue was the needed elixir for checking the growing insecurity in Kaduna, and the country at large.

According to Gumi, the insecurity in parts of the country, particularly Kaduna, Zamfara, and Katsina states were precarious and fluid.
It was time the authorities, he said, accepted that there was an insurgency, lest the crisis would worsen.

Gumi posited, “No doubt the security situation in the country and particularly Kaduna, Zamfara, and Katsina have become precarious and fluid. So long we refused to accept that there is an insurgency brewing we are far from reaching an end to this unwarranted crisis.

“If we accept that there is ethnic and now an ideological war going on in this region, we will better use the available opportunity of an open window before things get messy. This window of dialogue with the stakeholders in the conflict.

“We have witnessed how in past, the government dialogue with the Niger Delta militants and gave them amnesty and employed them to guard pipelines because of the strategic importance of oil to the national economy. Today, farming equally plays the same economic role or even better as the continuation of the conflict will halt farming and the subsequent food scarcity that will ensue.

“One advantage we still have is that the core hard-liners among the militant herdsmen are ready for a dialogue. We should not let this opportunity slip away”.

Efforts to speak with Governor el-Rufai through his media aide, Muyiwa Adekeye proved abortive. Adekeye neither picked his calls nor responded to a text message sent to his telephone by one of our correspondents.
Meanwhile, over the weekend10 persons were reported killed in Zangon Kataf and Chikun Local Government areas of Kaduna State.